The art of telling stories and expressing emotions through songs and dances in China dates back at least to three millennia ago when the last king of the Shang dynasty (1766-1050 BC), according to Chinese historical documents, indulged in an excessive lifestyle in which music, dance, and wine drinking played a crucial role. Despite this long tradition, the birth of the so-called “musical film” in China, a new performing art that has its roots in Broadway musicals and takes shape with the release of Warner Brothers’ The Jazz Singer in 1927, can only be arguably traced back to 1935, when director Yuan Muzhi (1909-1978) experimented the genre with his film Metropolitan Sights (Dushi fengguang). Furthermore, the Chinese musical, if there is such a term, differs greatly from the Hollywood musical, at least in its early stage. First of all, if excluding films recording Peking operas and various kinds of local operas (a handy example would be The Dingjun Mountain [Dingjun shan, 1905], attributed as the first film China has ever made), referred to as “Xiqupian” (films based on Chinese operas) in Chinese, it is quite hard to identify an early Chinese film that fits the definition of the Hollywood musical with the characteristics of “all-talking, all-singing, and all-dancing.” Early Chinese “musicals” are marked by interpolated songs, but with little dancing sequences. Secondly, despite the fact that Chinese cinema saw its first “golden age” in the 1930s, Chinese filmmakers in general didn’t have a clear sense of film genres. With the exception of “martial arts” films, which were inspired by the literary tradition of China, most Chinese films in the 1930s were made under the influence of realism, as film was considered a medium for social justice and progress. As a result, it is by no means an easy task to come up with a historical survey of Chinese musicals. To justify the current survey, the authors would like to make the following classifications: first, “Xiqupian” or the filmed stage operas and plays do not fall under our category of the Chinese musical; second, even without dancing sequences, some films, especially those in which songs played a significant role in both storytelling and emotional expression, will be considered as “Chinese musicals” or at least quasi-Chinese musicals; third, partly due to the above considerations, opera films, particularly the “model operas” (Yangbanxi) during the Cultural Revolution, will be excluded from the current survey.